Funding Single Payer

How will it be funded? A hike in payroll taxes is my understanding. How much of a hike? Will half the hike be pawned off on employers? What might that increase do to wages and employment opportunities? What about lower wage earners? ("regressive"?).

An individual's (and their employers') contribution to the Medicare system is accrued over their working lifetime, typically accessible only upon reaching the age of 65, and typically utilized for about 10 years for males and 17 years for females (and it's still deeply underwater)....Single Payer would make communal healthcare dollars available to an individual for their entire lives.

What sort of cost control measures could we expect? Would...or should... individuals who engage in risky behavior be assessed a surcharge? how about the ridiculously high percentage of people who can't put down their fork? drug addicts and alcoholics? unsafe sex fetishists?

There is no way to fund single payor except via enormous economy-killing tax hikes on the working middle class.

Not so.

…the sub rosa character of much tax-financed health spending in the United States obscures its
regressivity. Public spending for care of the poor, elderly, and disabled is hotly debated and
intensely scrutinized. But tax subsidies that accrue mostly to the affluent and health benefits
for middle-class government workers are mostly below the radar screen. National
health insurance would require smaller tax increases than most people imagine and would
make government’s role in financing care more visible and explicit.

snip

Money that individuals or private employers pay directly to insurers
or health care providers would be classified as “private”—with one important
caveat: that many of these “private” payments are subsidized by taxes. For instance,
if Jones earns $50,000 in salary plus $6,000 in employer-paid health
benefits, she pays no taxes on the $6,000 (and the employer deducts it as a business
expense).3 In contrast, if Jones were to receive a $6,000 pay increase, she
would pay an additional $2,779 in taxes: $1,551 in federal income tax, $310 in state
income tax, and $918 in payroll taxes.
When government grants Jones a $2,779 tax preference, these funds must be
made up from elsewhere…

How will it be funded? A hike in payroll taxes is my understanding. How much of a hike? Will half the hike be pawned off on employers? What might that increase do to wages and employment opportunities? What about lower wage earners? ("regressive"?).

An individual's (and their employers') contribution to the Medicare system is accrued over their working lifetime, typically accessible only upon reaching the age of 65, and typically utilized for about 10 years for males and 17 years for females (and it's still deeply underwater)....Single Payer would make communal healthcare dollars available to an individual for their entire lives.

What sort of cost control measures could we expect? Would...or should... individuals who engage in risky behavior be assessed a surcharge? how about the ridiculously high percentage of people who can't put down their fork? drug addicts and alcoholics? unsafe sex fetishists?

Let's discuss it. Let's do some basic math.

One thing is for sure, the quality of the product and service will drastically decrease under a federal single-payer system.